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IsSexualIdentityMyChoice?|DesiringGod

Is Sexual Identity My Choice?

June 5, 2014 by John Piper Topic: Homosexuality Series: Ask Pastor John

Is Sexual Identity My Choice? (Episode 357)

The following is a transcript of the audio.
Pastor John, what would you say to a man or to a woman who is considering a sex change operation? These are not amorphous
folks, they are clearly and obviously genetically and physically a man or woman, and he/she wants a gender change. What
would you say to someone considering transgender option?
Ok. Tony, the first thing I want to say is that anybody listening to this who is about to switch this off saying: Good night.
Transgender. That is so irrelevant to me. I dont need to listen to this today. Give me a minute before you turn this off. Consider
this. The cover of Time magazine for June 9, if you havent seen it has Laverne Cox, born a boy, now living with a different
sexual identification, acting on TV in the orange is the new black as a woman and featured as an admirable person pictured as a
woman with a painful story in the hope that we, the readers, would all affirm this way of life. The article and the interview
with Laverne are all about transgender experience. Like it or notthis is what I am saying to me and to uslike it or not it is
following right behind homosexual behavior in our culture in its aim to be mainstream and celebrated. Not to do so will be, as
the interview makes crystal clear, to be seen as hung up with our own sexual insecurities and at worst hateful. So it is relevant,
really front burner relevant.
And here, let me give you another couple of scenarios. What will you do, what will you say either clergy or layman if a family
visits your church whose 15 year old son attends your youth group wearing a dress, long, curly hair, painted fingernails, shaved
legs, lipstick, claiming to be a girl? Are your young people ready for that? Have they been taught anything about that? That will
come. And by are they ready I mean do they have a biblical understanding of sexuality that may help them form a sound
judgment about that? And do they have a good grasp of grace and truth so that they can have conviction and compassion in
those relationships?
One more situation that I think we are all going to face sooner or later. What are you going to say? What will your counsel be to
a 40 year old man or woman who comes to you, has just received Christ as Savior, Lord and treasure of their lives and had a sex
change surgery 20 years ago and they are now living as a man born a woman or as a woman born a man, what will repentance
look like in that situation? So those are the questions that are right in front of us and if people feel like it is not going to happen
to me, I am not going to have to deal with this, that is probably nave. If not you, your children probably will. And so let me try
to help a little bit here.
Here is the main question we are facing. Is gender or sexual identity set by a preference of the individual or by a providence of
God? Or to put it in another way: Is my sex determined by my decision in my mind or by Gods design in my nature? That is the
key question. We live in a day when individual autonomy, personal preference or choice is considered by many to have priority
over Gods design. That may be because they dont believe in God or more often because they dont believe God has spoken
with any kind of governing clarity on an issue. Either way, individual preference outweighs God. The reality of my desires has
weight. Most people feel they have weight in my life. God, he doesnt have any weight. For all practical purposes he is
inconsequential for our culture whether he exists or not. Very few people today in our culture are trembling before God even
though the creator told us the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. In other words, we cant even get to first base, we
cant even begin to be wise in sexual identity where there is no trembling before the living God.
So an example of this amazing elevation of personal individual autonomy over Gods designs in nature is the choice that
parents are makingyes, this is happeningparents are making today to use drugs to postpone puberty in their children so
that their sons and daughters can make their own decisions about whether they want to grow up to be a man or a woman. So
my question is: Then how shall we think biblically about these things?
Now I am just going to go to one place in the Bible to begin to lay a foundation that I think is absolutely essential. And it is
Romans 1:19-28. And the main thing to notice here is that the Bible draws a parallel between the way nature teaches truth
about God and the way nature teaches truth about male and female sexuality. And the point is this: nature is one of Gods
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methods of revealing what we should prefer, what our choices should be. Preference or choice is guided by Gods design in
nature. It is not independent as though you can simply choose your own essence. Whom we should worship is not left to our
preferences and who we are sexually is not left to our preferences. Both are dictated by Gods revelation in nature.
So look at the verse, verse 19, for example. What can be known about God is plain because God has shown it to them. For his
invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.
So Gods divine nature is revealed in physical, material things in the universe, so much so that verse 20 says: They are without
excuse if they exchange the glory of God for the glory of the creature. In other words, it is clear in Gods mind that what the
universe, what material, physical universe teaches about God is clear enough about who he is and whom we should worship
that we are without excuse if we dont.
Thenand this is the key thing for the transgender issuethen the text draws the parallel with human sexuality. Just as
physical nature reveals the truth about God, so physical nature reveals truth about sexuality identity. Verse 26 goes like this:
Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature and their men, likewise, gave up natural
relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.
So the one thing that I am focusing on here is Pauls understanding of the role of nature, the material, physical reality of the
universe and of our bodies. And what he is saying is that the role nature has to reveal truth about Gods identity as powerful
and divine, it also has in revealing our identity as male and female. That is the basic gist of everything I am saying from
Romans nine, namely that the role nature has is to reveal truth about Gods identity as powerful and divine and truth about
our identity as male and female. And it is so clear that we are without excuse if we dont see it.
So if a human looks at the world and chooses to worship a creature rather than the creator, he is without excuse. And if a man
looks at his own body and chooses to play the part of a woman, or a woman looks at her own body and chooses to play the part
of a man, they are without excuse, because in both cases, in divine worship and in human sexuality, God has given nature
cosmological and biologicalas the revelation of his will. Humans should worship God. Males should act like men. Females
should act like women.
Now back to Laverne Cox for just a moment. He was born a boy and is now trying to live as a woman. He would feel totally
opposite from what I just said. In fact, he would be angry for me using the word he.
Here is the quote: Folks want to believe that genitals and biology are like destiny. All these designations are based on a penis
and then vagina and that this supposed to say all these different things about who people are. When you think about it, it is
kind of ridiculous. People need to be willing to let go of what they think they know about what it means to be a man and what
it means to be a woman, because that doesnt necessarily mean anything inherently, close quote.
To which I respond: Well, right. Right. And that is not my argument or Pauls argument. The issue is not what nature says
inherently, but what it says as Gods revelation of his design for male and female. God is the wise, loving, purposeful creator
and designer of human life and, as such, he is missing totally from Coxs interview and, as far as I can tell, from his life. And that
will make all the difference.
So this is the foundation that I would lay from Romans one there.
But, Tony, the question... I really haven't even gotten to the question, have I? You asked: Well, what would I say to the person
maybe who totally agrees with what I am saying here and is caught in a strong sense of identity and desire that is contrary to
their anatomy and what would I say to them. And maybe we can take that up in our next episode. I just wanted to lay a
foundation here exegetically in Romans one and set the cultural stage for folks.

Related resources: Genitalia Are Not Destiny But Are They Design?
John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he
served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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